Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con): The 1984 joint declaration committed Britain and China together to preserve the freedoms and stability of, and a high degree of autonomy for, Hong Kong for 50 years. Recent large demonstrations there show that the people of Hong Kong have real concerns over proposals for the election of their next Chief Executive. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we should do everything possible to encourage the Governments of Hong Kong and China to find ways to provide the widest possible choice in that important election and that that is vital to the stability of Hong Kong and the interests of both Britain and China?

The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend that it is important that democracy involves real choices. I also think that we should be very clear about the importance we attach to the 1984 joint declaration, which makes it very clear that the current social and economic systems in Hong Kong will remain unchanged, including lifestyle. It talks about:

“Rights and freedoms, including those of the person, of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of travel, of movement, of correspondence”

and, indeed, “of strike”. Those are important freedoms jointly guaranteed through that joint declaration and it is that, most of all, that we should stand up for. [Source]

ON almost every distant rock of empire – in India, in Africa, in the Caribbean – Britain tried as it withdrew from its possessions to leave a democratic system as its legacy. But in Hong Kong, which is to be handed over to China in 1997, the British Government is critical of a democratic movement that has sprung up on its own, and it seems determined not to introduce a fully democratic system in the remaining years of its rule.

[…] The opposition to immediate democracy comes from an alliance of the British and Chinese Governments and business executives. The business leaders say that they favor democracy, but that change must come gradually to insure stability. [Source]

These documents—which, perhaps unbeknownst to the People’s Daily, Hong Kong journalists have been busily mining (link in Chinese)—show that not only were the Brits mulling granting Hong Kong self-governance in the 1950s; it was the Chinese government under Mao Zedong who quashed these plans, threatening invasion. And the very reason Mao didn’t seize Hong Kong in the first place was so that the People’s Republic could enjoy the economic fruits of Britain’s colonial governance. [Source]

Liu Di and Hu Shigen, both dissident writers, and Xu Youyu, a research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank, were released on bail, their lawyers and a relative said.

[…] “It goes without saying that he should have been let out,” Shang said. “Arresting someone for holding a meeting at home, this is too ridiculous. Prosecuting them for this will be even more outrageous.”

The activists had been detained on May 6 after they attended the meeting to mark the 25th anniversary of the crushing of protests around Tiananmen Square. A photograph of the gathering had circulated on the Internet.

[…] Pu Zhiqiang, the best known activist and a leading rights lawyer, and Hao Jian, who teaches at the Beijing Film Academy, remained in custody. Hao had hosted the forum at his home. [Source]

Within 10 minutes police showed up and ordered the French team into a police car and took them to police station. After an hour, public security officers arrived and interrogated them.

She said: “They separated us and questioned us for hours… The officer said, ‘You were speaking about a sensitive topic. You know that the topic is sensitive and the government don’t want people to speak about it.’

“I asked which Chinese law I broke. He answered, ‘It’s not a matter of law. It’s a matter of culture. The culture is above the law.’”

The team were released after six hours of interrogation. The next day they were questioned again and then had to appear before a video camera and admit they had done something “very sensitive” which could cause “disturbance”. [Source]

Police vehicles circle and armoured vehicles sit at the ready. Officers patrol on foot and ride electric cars through the crowds of tourists toting bright pink sun umbrellas, demanding to see identification. Less visible are the plainclothes officers, the young men in telltale golf shirts.

[…] Officers first ask for passports, then videotape them, then take multiple pictures with iPhones, which are then uploaded somewhere else. The video camera is then trained on the journalist as a plainclothes officer barks into a walkie-talkie.

When the check is over, an officer in a black “POLICE” T-shirt growls that photos of men in uniform are forbidden, and any interviews must first be cleared by special Tiananmen Square authorities, as well as by the interviewee’s danwei, or administrative unit.

“It’s time for you to go,” a second officer then says. “There’s nothing to see here.” [Source]

The line crept along for more than an hour. Police scrutinized each visitor’s national ID, checking each card with an electronic, hand-held scanner. Old women were body-wanded with metal detectors. Backpacks were X-rayed.

A Times reporter and two visiting friends from the U.S. were turned away after officers examined their passports, using a walkie-talkie to radio a supervisor with their visa numbers.

“You know why,” said one officer. “Come back tomorrow.”

[…] “Don’t you think it is a bit strange today? The way people are staring at each other,” a young woman in a sundress asked her male companion as they waited in the security line.

“I heard something happened here,” the man replied. She said nothing in response, and the couple lapsed into silence. [Source]

A surprising presence near the square the previous day was the authorities’ fifth most-wanted student protester Zhou Fengsuo, who returned from exile to mark the anniversary. Zhou also visited a detention center holding several activists before being detained, questioned and removed from the country. From Andrew Jacobs at The New York Times:

[… A] friend drove him around the city in what he described as a contemplative and highly emotional tour of the landmarks seared into his memory: Muxidi, the neighborhood where troops first opened fire; Jianguomen, where columns of tanks plowed through makeshift barricades; and Tiananmen Square, the place he spent so many days and nights as a 22-year-old student and one of the leaders of the protests.

Although he was tempted to get out of the car and make a public gesture, he knew it would be futile, given the cordon of police surrounding the square, Mr. Zhou said.

[…] Fearful that his trip might have been thwarted, Mr. Zhou said he had told nobody, not even his family. He said the decision to travel to China earlier this week was prompted by the arrest of Pu Zhiqiang, a legal defender, and four other people who attended the seminar commemorating the events of 1989. “I wanted to show some solidarity with my friends in prison and also with those who died 25 years ago,” he said. [Source]

Online, domestic news sites were ordered to “closely observe reporting discipline” under immediate supervision of “responsible editors”; social media and other sites were told to “strictly delete information about redressing and commemorating June 4th (including so-called sideways expressions). Anyone found to be violating discipline during this inspection will be severely punished.”

I remained silent all night. I don’t dare look straight at the rising sun. I remember the sun that day was blood red, blood red, like a wide-open, bloodshot eye.

And another:

I was there on that day. I saw a lot, but cannot say much even after so many years. I keep thinking of a poem by Lu Xun: I lower my head. How can I write out these lines? / Moonlight like water shines on my dark garment. [Source]

Guo Jian was detained shortly after the Financial Times interview was published. In it, he explained his recent creation of a model of Tiananmen Square covered in 160 kilograms of gradually rotting meat. “I wanted to do something privately to mark the anniversary,” he said. “But I should have covered [the diorama] in plastic first. It would have been easier to clean up.”

Today’s headline in The Beijing News: “For First Time, Armed Police to Patrol the Gaokao,” or university entrance examinations, in reaction to recent violent attacks. Also on page one: “Low-Quality Toilet Paper is Being Investigated.”

In Jinghua News: “12 Roads Given Green Light as ‘Examination Roads’,” and, “All Military and Party Officials Prohibited from Entering Private Clubs,” part of a crackdown on corruption.

People’s Daily leads with a speech by President Xi Jinping. The Beijing Morning News reports that 5 million renminbi in environmental fines was collected between January and May. China Youth Daily’s headline promises “China to Make Creativity a Strategic National Development Path.” [Source]

“While BBC’s factual programs have steadily risen in popularity in China, U.K. drama has been experiencing a surge in popularity here,” said Pierre Cheung, vice president and general manager of BBC Worldwide China.

“With this new deal, viewers in China will have access to more highly acclaimed and award-winning BBC dramas, as well as stunning high definition documentaries.”

[…] Sohu chief executive Charles Zhang said the BBC has a reputation for providing high-quality programming.

“We are very happy to be able to provide BBC’s documentaries and dramas to our viewers on our online platform, and we are confident that the service will bring in more viewers to Sohu.com,” Zhang said. [Source]

Newsnight host Jeremy Paxman quizzed Liu and Hayashi on historical grievances and their countries’ competing claims to the Diaoyu (or Senkaku) Islands. He asked Hayashi how Japan could call for dialogue while refusing to acknowledge the dispute, and whether the country is seeking to reestablish itself militarily. Hayashi responded that “the track record of the Japanese commitment to peace has been very strong,” and that it has “no intention of changing the core tenets of our pacifism.” He contrasted Japan’s “utmost self-restraint” with China’s “dangerous provocation” in “challenging the status quo by force and coercion. It’s completely against the international order.”

“Do you think it helps things to use childish abuse?” asked Paxman. “Comparing people to Voldemort, for example?” Hayashi replied that Liu had started it.

Paxman then crossed the studio to join the Chinese ambassador at another table. (“It’s not a seating configuration we frequently suggest to guests,” tweeted editor Ian Katz.) Liu countered that it was Japan that had disrupted the status quo when, after the issue had been peacefully “shelved” for 40 years, it moved to nationalize the islands in 2012.

While Paxman described the island dispute as “apparently piffling,” Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer told The Wall Street Journal that a clash between the two countries would be “the greatest geopolitical danger in the world in 2014″ if “the Chinese come after the Japanese in a serious way, because they see that as a lever to relieve some of their national strains.”

Amongst Tibetans there have been growing frustrations. And there’s an impression that, since the financial crisis, the outside world, and the West in particular, are not so keen to tackle China on its human rights record.

What nations want is access to China’s markets and its finances.

So Tibetans have been resorting to extreme protests, setting themselves on fire. More than 120 are thought to have done so in the past three years in protest at Chinese rule in their homeland.

[…] After the clampdown and the media blackout, the immolations are now less frequent.

But what is not being addressed are the grievances here: Tibetans fear that they are being marginalised, their culture eroded, their voices silenced, all while the rest of the world looks away. [Source]

It’s that time of year again. No, I don’t mean the Nobel Prizes. I’m not talking about the International Emmys. It’s time for the World Media Summit.

You know, that buzzing international meeting to carry on serious strategic dialogue about the future of media at the pleasure and expense of China, the country with the world’s most robust system of media controls. Or, as it is better unknown to all, the media event all major global media players attend but none bother to actually cover. Why not? Because under the surface it’s all just a little too disgusting.

[…] To sum up, the World Media Summit, this ostensible back-slapping affair offering an opportunity for media leaders to talk media strategy, is fundamentally about China projecting its influence over global media agendas. Any global media bosses at the summit who do not realize this — though I suspect plenty of them do — are woefully deceived. I want all of you participants at the World Media Summit right now to pick up your complimentary Xinhua News Agency fountain pens and write this on the back of your hand: “I am not here because China really wants to talk about the future of global media. I am here because China wants to channel the future of global media.” [Source]

The BBC has received reports that World Service English shortwave frequencies are being jammed in China. Though it is not possible at this stage to attribute the source of the jamming definitively, the extensive and co-ordinated efforts are indicative of a well-resourced country such as China.

[…] Director of BBC Global News, Peter Horrocks says: “The jamming of shortwave transmissions is being timed to cause maximum disruption to BBC World Service English broadcasts in China. The deliberate and co-ordinated efforts by authorities in countries such as China and Iran illustrate the significance and importance of the role the BBC undertakes to provide impartial and accurate information to audiences around the world.”

“The Chinese government has for years jammed VOA and Radio Free Asia Chinese and Tibetan language programs and blocked VOA vernacular language websites,” said VOA Director David Ensor, “but English language programs have historically not been blocked.”

[…] Monitors say the interference affects about 75% of the English language transmissions to China and is similar to the type of jamming aimed at VOA Horn of Africa broadcasts, which are targeted by equipment installed by China in Ethiopia.

“I don’t understand this situation,” foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a daily press briefing on Tuesday, when asked to comment on the allegations. She said reporters should contact “relevant departments” for further information, but did not specify which departments or how to contact them.

[…] Some analysts were confused by the timing of the BBC’s announcement. “This for me is very weird – it’s almost like 1990s,” said Michael Anti, a prominent media commentator in Beijing.

He said that in China people associate the BBC with its television dramas and Chinese-language news website, which is blocked but can be accessed using software to bypass internet censors.

“I doubt there is anyone listening to the BBC English radio in China,” he added.

It’s hard to pinpoint the rationale behind the blocking, and not just because the Chinese government does not of course claim responsibility. But we have a pretty good hint in this story from last week, when members of the Chinese military detained some BBC journalists who were trying to film outside the Shanghai complex where China’s elite military hacker team is thought to work. The BBC journalists were held inside the building until they surrendered their footage, which sounds as it were mostly just banal exterior shots.

The incident, and now China’s possibly related move to block BBC broadcasts, are a sign of how serious the Chinese government is about keeping prying eyes away from the suspected military hackers.

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/02/bbc-voa-protest-radio-jamming/feed/0Is China Squandering its Soft Power Investments?http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/05/is-china-squandering-its-soft-power-investments/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/05/is-china-squandering-its-soft-power-investments/#commentsWed, 16 May 2012 08:10:52 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=136394Following a series of damaging stories this year, notably the ousting of Bo Xilai and escape of Chen Guangcheng, The Atlantic’s Damien Ma argues that “for all the financial muscle thrown behind shaping its global image, Beijing may have squandered more soft power in the last few months than it has accrued in years“:

… The collective global attention paid to the world’s number-two economy has increased drastically in the media and within policy circles. Call it the “post-Olympics effect.” The triumphalism of the 2008 Beijing Games and the ensuing collapse of the global economy dramatically altered the extent and scope to which the world focused on China. Just a little over three years later, a “China story” is bound to splash across the front page of major U.S. papers week after week. The breadth and detail of coverage have increased significantly too. Many more Americans now likely know that there’s a gargantuan Chinese city called Chongqing and that its leader is in serious trouble. And many more will have heard of Vice President Xi Jinping. In 2002, how many people knew who Hu Jintao was or what a politburo standing committee was?

It is a given that this level of attention will persist. What is not clear is how China will ultimately adapt. While it’s theoretically positive for American public knowledge about China to grow, for Beijing, such endless attention is highly uncomfortable and unwelcome. What’s more, some of that attention carries the expectation that China should behave more like a top-two power. Even before the recent slew of political and human rights troubles, Beijing spurned the idea that it must play a more expansive global role, especially if that meant big distractions from the home front. In light of recent events, China may have had a point: The image it has projected lately is not of a country that is strutting onto the world stage confidently and unencumbered.

The African operation of the state-run China Daily will generate a range of Africa-specific content. It is to be based in Johannesburg, South Africa, with another office pencilled in for Nairobi, Kenya, reports said.

The aim is to promote China’s interests in Africa, particularly mineral exploitation and easy immigration policies, and to counter what is seen in some countries as a negative reputation, a source said. “This is a massive thing,” the source said. “China sees Africa as the ultimate source of the minerals it needs for economic growth ….”

It is not clear how widely China Daily’s African edition will be published or who its target readership is. “I don’t think that is the priority now,” the source added. “This is a symbolic move. They are working it out as they go along ….”

Although the paper is state-owned, Gao said the paper had an independent editorial policy and its editorial board members were not government officials. “We do run reports criticising government and suggesting measures on how it should improve.”

While commentary on China’s soft power drive and global image tends to be unfavourable, a BBC World Service survey [PDF] suggested that Beijing’s efforts may in fact be bearing fruit. Responses from 22 countries suggested that positive views of China have jumped over the past twelve months, continuing the trend of the two previous years. Favourable impressions of China are spreading faster than those of any other country, and at the current rate will overtake those of the UK, Canada and Germany to take second place behind Japan next year. The survey finds China, like the US, to be relatively polarising, but shows negative impressions dropping as sharply as positive views are rising.

The poll … finds that views of China have improved significantly over the last year, in both the developing and industrialised world, and that the country has now overtaken both the EU and the US ….

Germany, the most positively regarded nation last year, has seen its positive ratings drop from 60 to 56 per cent. This puts Germany in second place behind Japan, which is now rated most positively—by 58 per cent on average, up two points from last year. Canada (rated positively by 53%) and the UK (by 51%) are the third and fourth most positively viewed countries.

Positive views of China rose from 46 to 50 per cent on average. They jumped particularly sharply in the UK (up 19 points), as well as in Australia, Canada, and Germany (all up 18 points). These gains follow modest rises between 2010 and 2011.

Chen’s call came into the iPhone of friend and fellow activist Bob Fu during the middle of the hearing of the Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC), chaired by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ). Fu and Smith ran out of the hearing room to take the call and returned minutes later to put Chen on speakerphone so that he could address the audience.

“I want to make the request to have my freedom of travel guaranteed,” Chen said in Chinese, with Fu translating.

Chen said he wants to come to the United States for a period of rest because he has not had any rest in 10 years.

“I want to meet with Secretary Clinton,” Chen said. “I also want to thank her face to face.”

Blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng on Thursday began a second night isolated in a central Beijing hospital, as police and security guards barred U.S. diplomats, journalists and Chen supporters from seeing him, and as the activist told various news outlets that he now wants to leave China with his family for asylum in the United States.

In an interview early Friday with The Washington Post, Chen clarified that he wants to go to the United States only temporarily and insists on the freedom to return to China. He said he left the U.S. Embassy on Wednesday of his own free will, but he charged that the Chinese government is reneging on promises to U.S. officials to fully restore his freedom.

“The U.S. Embassy helped me a lot,” Chen said. “But I don’t think the Chinese side is obeying the agreement well.”

U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke said Thursday that “it’s apparent now that he’s had a change of heart” and wants to go to the United States. Chen had previously insisted that he wanted to remain in China, U.S. officials said. In an interview broadcast on CNN, Locke said U.S. diplomats spoke twice with Chen by telephone Thursday and met in person with his wife, Yuan Weijing. He said the United States was now assessing how best to assist Chen.

Q: U.S. officials said you looked optimistic when you walked out of the embassy, what happened?

A: At the time I didn’t have a lot of information. I wasn’t allowed to call my friends from inside the embassy. I couldn’t keep up with news so I didn’t know a lot of things that were happening.

Q: What prompted your change of heart?

A: The embassy kept lobbying me to leave and promised to have people stay with me in the hospital. But this afternoon as soon as I checked into the hospital room, I noticed they were all gone ….

Q: Do you feel you were lied to by the embassy?

A: I feel a little like that.

Q: What has this ordeal taught you?

A: I feel everyone focuses too much on their self-interest at the expense of their credibility.

The earlier sense of betrayal may have been in part a product of Chen’s exhausted and emotionally strained state, evident in another interview with Newsweek’s Melinda Liu. Liu described his family’s isolation in the heavily guarded hospital, their difficulty in obtaining food, and the psychological toll that recent events had clearly taken:

I’ve known Chen Guangcheng for more than a decade—he’s been through intimidation, beatings, jail, and extralegal house arrest—but through it all I never sensed he was scared. Now he’s scared. Chen, whose case has escalated into a bilateral crisis that threatens to dominate Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Beijing this week, was weeping as he talked to me over the phone from his hospital bed.

He told me there was no explicit threat that she would be submitted to physical violence, “but nobody had to say it, I know what we’ve experienced all these years back in Shandong. Our home was surrounded by guards, lots of guards. Our friends weren’t allowed to visit. If we tried to go out we’d be beaten, often with clubs.” Security personnel had even escorted his young daughter to and from school; Chen and his wife hadn’t seen their son for two years before their reunion at the hospital.

Chen Guangcheng’s sudden change of heart to leave China after insisting for days he wanted to stay has caught his American supporters off guard. But his reason was simple: His family’s safety came first.

Reliant on relatives to be his eyes on the world, Chen and his family share a bond strengthened by years of enforced isolation and a shared fight against vengeful local officials. His son was taken from him two years ago. His daughter has been harassed, his wife beaten, his mother followed by guards as she tilled their fields ….

Photos of the reunion released Thursday by the U.S. show Chen in a wheelchair in a bright hospital hallway smiling warmly as he greeted his wife and two children. His 6-year-old daughter, Kesi, wore pigtails and his son of about 10, Kerui, was dressed in a T-shirt and sweat pants. In a second shot, Kerui rested a tentative hand on his father’s wheelchair.

The moment marked the first time in two years that the boy had seen his father, diplomats said.

Teng Biao: I heard one of the guards watching over you was detained, the one that helped you escape. Is this true?

Chen Guangcheng: Nobody helped me escape. I escaped by myself.

TB: Have you heard about Pearl [Nanjing activist who helped Chen escape]?

CGC: No, but I heard she has disappeared.

TB: Yes, she has disappeared. Guo Yushan has also been released but he’s also in danger. Without a doubt, they are going to sort all you guys out later. They also promised in [1989] they would not punish anyone, but look what happened next – how many people did they shoot?

Activist Zeng Jinyan was taking her young daughter to school on Thursday morning when public security agents who had been following her in a black car informed her she wouldn’t be allowed to leave her home, she said in a post on her Twitter account.

“We will do our utmost to see to it that your daughter is picked up and dropped off and do our utmost to see to your daily needs. You can’t go out for these next few days,” she quoted the agents as saying.

Ms. Zeng had been among the first to cast doubt on the deal for Mr. Chen’s release the previous night, saying on Twitter that Mr. Chen and his wife had told her Mr. Chen was willing to leave China with his family but left the embassy out of fear for his family’s safety. Ms. Zeng wasn’t answering her phone Thursday afternoon.

Horrocks said the BBC was targeted over its coverage of Guangcheng, the blind Chinese activist who escaped house arrest and fled to the US embassy in Beijing.

“Today is World Press Freedom Day and during recent days we have learnt that BBC World News, our 24/7 international news channel, has been jammed by Chinese authorities during stories they regard as sensitive,” said Horrocks in a blogpost on the BBC’s website.

“This deliberate electronic interference of the channel’s distribution signal is just the latest in a long line of examples to block our impartial news and prevent it reaching audiences.”

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China circulated an email to members Thursday, warning them that “reporters have had their press cards confiscated (hopefully just temporarily) and have been escorted from the premises at Chaoyang Hospital.” Chen was being treated at the hospital on Wednesday for injuries he sustained during his dramatic flight from extrajudicial house arrest to the U.S. embassy last week, according to international news reports. The story is censored in China.

In two separate incidents, men in plainclothes harassed and threatened media crews from two outlets who were attempting to visit Chen’s home on Tuesday and Wednesday, the news outlets reported. Stephen Jiang, an editor for CNN in Beijing, described his encounter on the CNN website, saying that “a half-dozen burly men stood guard,” which led to scuffling and a cameraman’s equipment being seized. The reporting trip was intended to “find Chen’s family—but couldn’t get close,” Jiang reported.

“When we see reports of lawyers, artists and others who are detained or ‘disappeared,’ the United States speaks up both publicly and privately,” Clinton said in a speech at the East-West Center think-tank shortly before a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi ….

As Chinese President Hu Jintao arrived in Honolulu for the summit, Clinton said the US was “alarmed by recent incidents in Tibet of young people lighting themselves on fire in desperate acts of protest, as well as the continued house arrest of the Chinese lawyer Chen Guangcheng.”

“We continue to call on China to embrace a different path ….”

A senior US official said that Clinton also brought up the cases directly with Yang, but also sought cooperation on a range of issues including Iran amid new charges the Islamic regime is pursuing nuclear weapons.

Based on interviews with a number of activists involved in the current campaign to free Chen, CHRD traces the genesis of this remarkable mobilization, which has spread beyond the small circle of human rights activists: citizens from all walks of life are undertaking trips to Dongshigu Village and participating in online activities in an effort to draw attention to Chen’s situation. Drawing on the meaning of Chen’s given name, they have coined the slogan for their movement from which this report takes its name: “Let there be light, let there be sincerity!” (要有光，要有诚).

In this report, CHRD outlines the horrendous conditions of the house arrest to which Chen and his family have been subjected following his release from Linyi Prison in September 2010. It details how the treatment of Chen violates Chinese law and the international human rights standards which the Chinese government has vowed to uphold. The report shows how both central and local governments have completely failed in their duty to protect the rights of Chen and his family, and how this has emboldened local officials by tacitly approving the abusive measures they have employed.

The three men acted swiftly and efficiently – they had a job to do. They yanked open the car door, barked a few orders and then snatched equipment from out of our hands: cameras, mobile phones and recording devices. We were told to stay put while one man radioed for help ….

When the BBC visited, it was clear the men who stopped us were well drilled and organised – although it was impossible to say who had hired them.

There appeared to be a chain of command: one man took took some money from our car and put it into his pocket, before someone else told him to put it back.

The men wore plain clothes, showed no identification and refused to answer questions about who they were. They did not ask before taking what they wanted.

After searching our equipment they gave it back and then told us to leave the village.

“Nov. 12, 2011 is Chen Guangcheng’s birthday,” said the letter, which was sent to an unknown number of households in Chen’s home county of Yinan this week. “There will continue to be large numbers of people trying to get through to visit him.”

“We will not stand idly by and watch this happen,” it said. “Unite in support of Chen Guangcheng!” […]

Wang [Xuezhen, a Shandong-based rights activist] said that many villagers had burned the letter, titled “Telling the elders about their fellow countryman,” as soon as they saw what it said.

“Local government propaganda has been telling them that there are enemy forces at work, which is why so many people have been set to guard a single man.”

“They have previously said that Chen Guangcheng is a spy for the United States, so those people are very frightened, and they burned the letter as fast as they could.”

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/11/clinton-presses-china-on-tibet-chen-guangcheng/feed/0What Exactly Is the World Media Summit?http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/09/what-exactly-is-the-world-media-summit/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/09/what-exactly-is-the-world-media-summit/#commentsFri, 30 Sep 2011 06:21:15 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=124313This week leaders of the world news media gathered in Beijing for the second biennial World Media Summit. From The Financial Times:

Eleven heavyweight media executives including New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr, BBC director-general Mark Thompson and AP president Tom Curley attended the summit and discussed things such as the protection of intellectual property rights, journalists’ safety, the media’s role in disasters and media cooperation in the new media era.

Two years ago I wrote about the inaugural session of the World Media Summit, a gathering of world media “leaders” conceived, planned and by all accounts funded by China’s official Xinhua News Agency, which falls under China’s State Council and is subject to the public opinion controls of the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party. The biennial event, which China’s state media touted in 2009 as “the media Olympics,” kicked off again in Beijing yesterday ….

There is of course nothing wrong with global news executives meeting with their Beijing counterparts to discuss business cooperation and exchange.

The problem here is that news executives are being duped into participating in an institutional framework that is ostensibly “non-governmental [and] non-profit” but which is backed and funded by the Chinese state via its official news agency, and which clearly has agendas beyond simple business exchange that overlap with those of the Chinese leadership.

S. Pandiyarajan was fiddling around with his shortwave radio set one hot summer evening at Villupuram, Tamil Nadu, when he stumbled upon a strange station.

At first listen, it was a language he couldn’t identify. It sounded like Tamil, but spoken in an accent he could not recognise. He listened on, straining his ears. To his surprise, he discovered that the voices were coming from faraway China.

“I could hear two Chinese people speaking in perfect Tamil!” he said. “And this was Sentamizh [classical Tamil], which you never hear anywhere, anymore, even in Tamil Nadu ….”

With humble beginnings in the civil war-torn China in the 1940s, CRI today is at the centre of a massive multi-billion dollar effort to boost rising China’s “soft power” overseas, sending out daily broadcasts in 63 languages, 24 hours a day, from its expansive multi-storey headquarters in west Beijing ….

The Tamil station started broadcasting in 1963. Since then, it has continued to beam its shows uninterrupted, building up an almost cult following overseas, with its fans even organising themselves into a network of listeners’ clubs.

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/08/from-beijing-to-villupuram-a-radio-station-spreads-its-reach/feed/0“If China Doesn’t Solve Its Water Problems, There’s No China Story”http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/05/if-china-doesnt-solve-its-water-problems-theres-no-china-story/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/05/if-china-doesnt-solve-its-water-problems-theres-no-china-story/#commentsSun, 29 May 2011 01:26:17 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=121401Jim Rogers recently appeared on BBC’s HardTalk (via BusinessInsider; videos embedded below), arguing that despite the problems China faces, it remains more attractive in terms of investment than the “bankrupt” West. Echoing his warning in a recent Shanghai Daily interview, he claims that water is the one potentially fatal issue confronting China:

I don’t mind if China has civil war, epidemics, panics, depressions, all of that. You can recover from that. The only thing you cannot recover from is water … China has a horrible water problem in the north. India has a worse water problem, there’s no question about that; America, in some places, has water problems. If China doesn’t solve its water problems then there’s no China story … I’ve been around the world a couple of times, I’ve seen whole societies, cities, countries that disappeared when the water disappeared.

They’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars … they’re spending staggering amounts of money trying to solve their water problem. I am presuming that they will. Now, maybe they won’t, and if they won’t, in twenty or thirty or forty years, the whole story’s over.

He acknowledges other looming problems such as demographics. “But I don’t see any other country on the horizon which will be the most important country in the 21st Century. It’s not going to be the UK. It’s not going to be the US. It’s not going to be Denmark.”

Rogers also discusses rising oil prices, America’s economic fate, and the Asia-centric education he has chosen for his children.

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/05/if-china-doesnt-solve-its-water-problems-theres-no-china-story/feed/0Video: BBC World Service’s Last Mandarin Transmissionhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/04/video-bbc-world-services-last-mandarin-transmission/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/04/video-bbc-world-services-last-mandarin-transmission/#commentsMon, 04 Apr 2011 21:17:07 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=120011BBC producer Dawn Trump has posted a short video feature (in Chinese) on the World Service’s last Mandarin transmission on March 25. The video includes the last few moments of the final broadcast:

Due to the jamming of short wave radio signals by the Chinese authorities over decades, BBC Chinese’s radio programming in Mandarin struggles to make a lasting impact and reaches a very small audience [595,000] given the size of the target population. Given the financial pressures, the service will refocus away from radio to concentrate on its online provision, which – while still subject to control and censorship – has greater future potential for growth. With rapid technological changes happening in China (the biggest broadband and mobile market in the world), the BBC will strengthen its online offer; continue to explore opportunities on new platforms such as mobile phones; and invest in new technologies to facilitate content delivery to its target audience in mainland China and to Chinese communities abroad. BBC World News, the BBC’s international English language news and information television channel, is available in China, generally without restriction, and is estimated to have a bigger audience than the Mandarin radio service.

It was my grandfather’s secret life and hidden ritual, but one that he shared with millions across the globe. Throughout the 1970s, in his tiny Kiev apartment, my grandfather would wait until his extended family was asleep, tiptoe to the kitchen, quietly switch on the transistor Spidola radio, and gently push the dial to shortwave. He wiggled and waved the antenna to dispel the fog of jamming, climbed on chairs and tables to get the best reception, steered the dial in between transmissions of East German pop and Soviet military bands, pressed his ear tight to the speaker, and, through the hiss and crackle, made his way to these magical words: “This is the Russian Service of the BBC. The time in London is 10 o’clock.” …

On March 22, many of the BBC Radio Foreign Language Services were silenced as part of the British government’s budget cuts. No longer will the BBC talk on the airwaves in Russian, Hindi, Mandarin, Turkish, Vietnamese, Azeri, Ukrainian, Albanian, Cuban-Spanish, Portuguese-African, Serbian, Albanian, or Macedonian. The station will have 30 million fewer listeners a week. There will be some websites and podcasts in the dropped languages, but these will be of limited relevance. Even in a fairly developed country like Russia, only 20 percent of the population has access to Internet connections fast enough to listen to audio podcasts ….

Now that “London time” has been silenced, it is the audience who will suffer least. They can tune in to a host of new radio shows and other media developed by the dictatorships. And though Congress is threatening budget cuts, there’s still the American Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty—in lieu of London, one can keep “Washington time.” No, the loss of the World Service is all Britain’s. In the place on the dial where my grandfather used to hear the words “The time in London is … ” there is only a hoarse hiss and crackle. We are losing our voice. Are we to become history’s mutes?

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/04/video-bbc-world-services-last-mandarin-transmission/feed/0BBC Chinese Service Makes Final Broadcast in Mandarinhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/03/bbc-chinese-service-makes-final-broadcast-in-mandarin/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/03/bbc-chinese-service-makes-final-broadcast-in-mandarin/#commentsSat, 26 Mar 2011 00:39:23 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=119714Due to funding cuts, BBC has decided to stop airing radio broadcasts in Mandarin Chinese, although its website will continue with Mandarin service. From BBC News:

BBC World Service Mandarin programming began back in 1941, pre-dating by eight years the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China.

To a country starved of information, BBC Chinese carried news from inside and outside China – most notably of the Vietnam War and Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s.

In June 1989, with the world’s attention on the democracy protests in China, more and more Chinese tuned in.

The English-language version of one of China’s largest papers, the Global Times, called it the “end of an era”. The Western broadcasters contend they have simply moved with the times.

The plan was announced at a recent meeting of China branch employees by VOA Director Dan Austin, who said he supports the administration plan, despite opposition within the unit.

If Congress approves the plan, all shortwave VOA radio and television broadcasts in Chinese, under way since 1942, will end on Oct. 1.

The U.S. government will continue to operate Radio Free Asia, a less official and smaller news operation that will continue broadcasts into China and other closed states in Asia. It also is facing budget cuts that officials say will limit its effectiveness.

However, Voice of America has a much wider audience and larger reach that will be sharply curtailed by the shift to the Internet because many Chinese in rural areas or regions facing central government punishment do not have access to the Internet or cell phones.

Their audience are not young, rich Chinese who go on shopping tripts to the U.S. and can access the Internet outside of China or buy a subscription to Newsweek. Their audience are the Chinese whose basic rights are being violated, those under house arrest, 750 million Chinese without Internet access. Yet, these BBG and VOA executives think they know better and want to fire 40 plus experienced VOA Chinese Branch journalists who specialize in human rights reporting and replace them with contractors who supposedly know how to produce slick content for the Internet.